Dr. Hallum was named as a CNN hero due to her efforts, with AIR, the organization she established almost 20 years ago with the goal of assisting local communities in Central America to conserve their environment through reforestation, sustainable farming, and education. AIR, which is working mainly in Guatemala has done since then a tremendous work, focusing on planting trees as one of the the most effective ways to achieve its goals.

We congratulate Dr. Hallum on this wonderful achievement. Eco-Libris is proud to have AIR as one of its planting partners and support its important work in Guatemala. Since 2007 we planted more than 60,000 trees with AIR and we hope to continue and plant many more in our quest to balance out as many books as possible by planting trees. These trees have a tremendous value, both environmental and social, and only lately we could learn on their importance, preventing mudslide tragediescaused by tropical storm Agatha.

The effort, nearly 20 years strong, was one Hallum said she never really planned. A political science professor at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, Hallum traveled to the rural town of Nueva Concepcion, Guatemala, in 1991 as an adviser for a university field trip. It was her first trip outside the United States, and despite not being able to speak Spanish, she was moved by a blatant poverty that "broke her heart" and birthed a "new purpose."

"I went into the villages where lots of the trees were cut down, and I held some of the children," said Hallum, 57. "They were listless and couldn't hold themselves up. Their eyes were dull, and it became pretty clear that they were malnourished."

The farms she visited were not sustainable, she said, because the soil was eroded and lacked nutrients. Hallum, a self-proclaimed nature lover, was not formally trained in agriculture, but she knew some basic facts about trees and food products that could be cheaply grown. With the help of a former student, she researched rural resources and learned that many local Guatemalan tree varieties could be strategically replanted to provide fruit, fertilizer, coffee, food and medicinal herbs where resources were failing or nonexistent.

"When we started, it was all about fighting poverty," Hallum said. "We wanted to help families farm better and feed their children better. But we started to notice that in the areas where (pine) trees were planted, the mudslides were no longer occurring. So that brought a new focus for us. Food, shade, fertilizer and mudslide protection -- the trees can do it all."

Nearly 373 square kilometers of trees are destroyed each year in Guatemala, according to the University of Santa Barbara's Department of Geography. Through her group's efforts, Hallum is inspiring villagers to stop chopping and, instead, use trees to safeguard their lives and crops against mudslides. So far AIR has helped 110 rural villages plant more than 3.8 million trees throughout Guatemala.

Check out the Alliance for International Reforestation website at www.air-guatemala.org. More information on our work with AIR can be found on the annual assessments which are available on our planting partners page.

ebooks vs. paper books:

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener.

To achieve these goals Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris balanced out over 179,500 books, which results in more than 200,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.